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March 28, 2008
* an update to Grant's update....
regarding this bit at the end of Grant's blog today:
>>
P.S. Before I forget...I didn't go to see President Clinton. It seemed more important to try to get the magazine done, and I didn't fancy standing in line all afternoon.
>>
As fate would have it, shortly after Bill Clinton left Morehead, he headed for my neck of the woods -- not precisely Mebane, but nearby Greensboro, about a half-hour down the road, where he spoke this morning.
And, no, I didn't go, either.
I knew about the visit in part because -- like Grant, who mentioned this in his blog-entry of a few days ago -- somehow I recently turned up on Hillary Clinton's e-mail list. No idea how. The fact that both Grant and I report this same coincidence is of small concern to me. (I've since opted-out of her e-mail list.)
Let me make clear that I truly appreciate what Bill Clinton did for this country from 1992-2000. And that I greatly appreciated Hillary Clinton's efforts to put health care front-and-center during her husband's administration.
But it has come to this, for me:
If Hillary Clinton somehow ends up the Democratic party's nominee, there is a very real possibility that I will vote for John McCain.
I won't commit to that, not yet, not now -- largely because I believe it's a moot point, and that Barack Obama will receive the nomination he so clearly deserves.
But the mere fact that I would consider voting for the Republican candidate for president probably speaks enough to the disenchantment I now harbor for the way the Clintons have handled their campaign in recent weeks.
If this sounds like a mild endorsement of McCain, it's not meant to be. I have serious problems with a great many of the policies he would espouse and promote as president.
I do, however, respect a man who will get up in front of Michigan voters and tell them some of their jobs aren't coming back.
Just as I greatly respect a man who gets up in front of the nation and explains that matters of race aren't nearly as black-and-white as we may wish to paint them.
Barack Obama is what America needs, of that I am certain.
As for John McCain and Hillary Clinton -- I may like some of the latter's policies more. I am not sure I respect the person more. Quite possibly not enough to vote for her, if somehow faced with that choice.
adios,
peter
Posted by Peter at 7:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
March 26, 2008
* "alleys of austin...."
Too busy putting together the final ND at present to provide much in the way of connective tissue tonight...but there's a handful of loose change rattling around in the pockets of my brain, and it all appears to be at least tangentially related to my hometown of Austin:
* Just by sheer chance, the past couple days I've been channel-surfing at the very end of the night and have happened upon footage of the Faces on VH1 Classic. Last night's was two songs at the very end of a film called Sound Of The City: London 1964-73; tonight's is a full set from what appears to be a slightly later time, a live performance on BBC Television.
Many of my close friends would probably disown me for admitting this, but my background in the Faces is really pretty spotty. Their heyday was really just a little too early for me to appreciate; as an elementary-schooler in the early-mid-'70s raised on AM Top-40 radio, I fell in with the vast masses who'd heard Rod Stewart but not that band he used to be in. Somehow when I went through my "rediscovering the classics" phase in my teen years, I dug (to varying depths) into the Beatles and the Stones and Dylan and the Byrds and Buffalo Springfield and Led Zep and the Who and plenty other legends of the era, but somehow never made it to the Faces. I do remember purchasing a bootleg cassette in 1995 in Australia, but sound-quality was for shit and so I got none of the spark that so many people I knew swore up and down about.
Thus my relationship to the Faces has all ended up funneling through my connection to Austin, as fate would have it. Bassist Ronnie Lane moved there in the mid-'80s, just as I was going out to see bands all the time; he was in a wheelchair from multiple sclerosis by then, but still had that twinkle in his eye and that magic in his voice, and it was no surprise to see a horde of first-rate Austin musicians line up to play in his band. (Among them were erstwhile True Believers Alejandro Escovedo, John Dee Graham and J.D. Foster, as well as moonlighting Poi Dog Pondering players Susan Voelz and Dave Crawford, and rising Austin radio icon Jody Denberg.)
Later, after I'd left town for Seattle in the early '90s, keyboardist Ian McLagan moved to Austin too; I believe it was shortly after Lane's death in 1997 in Colorado (where he'd moved a few years prior). McLagan remains a mainstay of the Austin scene, playing frequently with his Bump Band (another set of top-flight local cats) at clubs such as the Lucky Lounge and the Saxon Pub. In visits back home over the years I've caught a couple of his shows, though probably not as many as I should have.
Seeing the classic footage from the band's heyday the past couple nights was a real nice surprise, a chance to see Ian holding court with his old pals, and to see Ronnie in his prime, alive with wide-eyed wonder. At one point they go into Paul McCartney's "Maybe I'm Amazed" and Ronnie sings the first verse, soaring with the high notes before Stewart comes in at the chorus. So, OK, I'm decades late to the party. Sure was a nice thing to stumble upon at midnight, in any event.
* Speaking of Jon Dee Graham -- he'll be doing a solo-opening set on Monday evening at the Alamo Drafthouse on South Lamar in Austin, as a lead-in to a screening of the documentary film Purple State Of Mind, which I blogged about at length a few weeks back (see here). I'd like to take this opportunity to urge any Austinites who may be reading this to go catch this movie, which is one of the most rewarding films I've seen in the past few years. Jon Dee lending his time and music to the event is a kind and noble gesture; meanwhile, you can get further editorial and musical insight from one of the film's two creators, John Marks, in our upcoming final issue of No Depression, per a feature story he's writing for us on a well-known Texas band.
* Going through my leftover notes from SXSW a week and a half ago, I found the following ramble written while listening to Abra Moore in the 18th Floor lounge atop the Hilton Garden hotel:
"When you're on the 18th floor of the Hilton, and you look to the southwest, you see Austin's future -- the Frost Bank Tower, the new hotels, the high-rise condos either under construction or already built. When you look to the northwest, you see the grand, lonely, old Austin -- the Capitol building, and the UT Tower, still standing strong and proud and full of character and years, if no longer tall in relation to the modern skyline. Theirs is a lost elegance, an architectural relic, an almost European old-world sentiment commemorating an Austin that used to be. And still is, I suppose -- the buildings are still there, and the state government and the University of Texas remain the city's primary employers -- but they aren't the dominating guardians of Austin's identity that they once were."
Just seemed worth sharing....
* One more serving of SXSW leftovers to add to the pile, if I may present the following visual element:
What you see here has become known over the years simply as The Hat. Longtime friend and occasional ND contributor Steve Terrell, a political reporter for the Santa Fe New Mexican daily newspaper, introduced The Hat to SXSW many years ago, wearing it around town as he attended various showcases and parties. One came to expect seeing not only Terrell, but The Hat.
The catch was that because of his duties covering the New Mexico State Legislature for the daily paper, Terrell generally was able to attend SXSW only every other year (i.e., the years when the legislature wasn't in session during mid-March). The years he wasn't able to come, we missed seeing Steve...but, it must be noted, we really missed The Hat.
So at some point it came to be that in the years Terrell could not attend, he would send The Hat to some unlikely suspect amid our circle of friends, who would then be anointed Keeper Of The Hat until the time of SXSW arrived, at which point said Keeper would accompany The Hat to Austin and we'd gather at some bar or another, taking turns toasting Terrell and hoisting The Hat upon our noggins.
This year we got to see both Terrell and The Hat. We gathered one evening at Artz Rib House for a fine dining experience of barbecue and our celebratory annual session of, well, passing The Hat.
So, if, at a future SXSW, you spy The Hat jutting skyward somewhere above the crowd -- now you know the story. It may not quite rival the Beatle Bob story, but then, Beatle Bob is hatless.
adios,
peter
Posted by Peter at 10:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
March 18, 2008
* SXSW: the rest of the story....
Please understand the inevitable delays of Monday travel and Tuesday recuperation (not to mention mail-catchup) in finishing this particular SXSW report as viewed through the eye of one needle in the haystack of bands and fans that walked the streets of Austin last weekend. What follows are some scattershot final observations about Friday, Saturday and Sunday:
Best Single Set: Chuck Prophet at the Ale House, 11 p.m. Friday. That the room was about two sizes too small for the crowd -- and for the increasingly ambitous scale and scope of Prophet's music -- only served to amplify and intensify the glorious performance turned in by Prophet and his four-piece band. While he's always been a compelling live performer, Prophet seems to be stretching beyond himself these days, reaching heights he's never quite hit before. The vocal balance between him and keyboardist Stephanie Finch is precisely on target, while the rest of the crew just keeps driving all the dramatics and dynamics and grooves of Prophet's songs to tighter and trippier end-results. The peak moment: "Let's Do Something Wrong", a mission-statement for breaking the daily grind that had the crowd chanting along by song's end: "Let's do something wrong, let's do something stupid!"
Longest Drive To SXSW: The Whipsaws. No one can claim to have burned more rubber on the way to Austin than the Whipsaws, who drove their van down the Al-Can Highway all the way from their hometown of Anchorage, Alaska. A righteously roots-rockin' foursome, the Whipsaws played nearly a dozen sets during the week, either under their own name or backing up Tim Easton. (Lucinda Williams joined Easton and the boys onstage for a song at the Continental Club on Sunday night.) Having lived in Anchorage for one long and lonely summer in 1987, I can only say I wish there had been a band as good as the Whipsaws on the local scene back then. They made their town proud, and had the time of their lives doing it.
Best Match Of Artist And Venue: Abra Moore at the 18th Floor Hilton Garden, midnight Friday. Many years I've gone to see Abra at SXSW only to be disappointed; the exquisitely delicate beauty of her music just doesn't work on the noisy Sixth-Street corridor that is the heart of SXSW's venue-plan. The answer: Move her up -- 18 floors off the ground, to be specific. At the top of the Hilton Garden hotel is a bar/lounge area that has been used as a venue for SXSW in previous years, though it always seemed to feel too much like a converted conference room. This year they got it right, removing a wall between the stage and the bar, hanging much warmer lights from the ceiling, and re-orienting the stage north, toward the "old Austin" beauty of the Capitol and the UT Tower (as opposed to the increasingly and alarmingly crowded new-downtown skyline). Finally, Abra could feel at home -- and the result was mesmerizingly magical, thanks to her sweet and soaring vocal flights and the terrific jazzy accompaniment of guitarist Will Sexton and trumpeter Ephraim Owens. All those people down below us were lost awash in a sea of screech and skronk; up on the 18th Floor, we floated somewhere nearer to heaven, for 40 precious minutes.
Best Off-The-SXSW-Path Detour: My response to what seemed a weaker-than-normal Saturday-night lineup in the downtown core was to stop looking for a great band and instead just go to a great club: the Cactus Cafe. Tucked into a corner of the University of Texas Student Union building, the Cactus is usually a sleepy place during SXSW; Longhorn students are away on spring break, and often the Cactus is closed for the entire week. Occasionally, proprietor Griff Luneburg opens the place up for a private party or a special event; on this night, though, it was simpler, more like the club's long-standing open mikes, with a dozen or so singer-songwriters playing four or five songs to a modest but appreciative audience.
There were a few semi-well-known folks (Darden Smith, Gurf Morlix, Tommy Womack, Caroline Herring) and some up-and-coming locals largely unknown outside of Austin (Graham Weber, Abi Tapia, Leatherbag), but what really made the night was just kicking back at the Cactus, the place Townes Van Zandt called "my home club" -- he signed a poster attesting to that, right there on the back wall behind the stage. When considering the great Austin venues over the decades, the Armadillo and Antone's and the Continental and Liberty Lunch are frequently mentioned...but the Cactus has fully earned its place alongside those legendary haunts. Just check out the dozens of posters adorning the walls of the lounge outside the entrance -- which, as it happens, are arranged much like I've long had them on the wall of my home:
SXSW Serendipitous Moment: Friday's 9 p.m. slot started out like one of those occasional festival misadventures, hiking from place to place searching for something and ending up with nothing. Turned away from the overcrowded Antone's (where the marvelous Basia Bulat was holding court), I took a look at the schedule and noticed that an old-school Seattle punk band, the Fall-Outs, was playing just around the corner. I quickly shuffled over to their venue, managing to catch the tail end of their set -- and was rewarded with a full-on euphoric epiphany when they launched into their final number. Immediately I found myself almost involuntarily bounding right up to the front of the crowd and singing along.
The song was "Sleep", a tune so infectious and punk-perfect that it belongs up there with Mudhoney's "Touch Me I'm Sick" in the annals of great Seattle singles, even if the Fall-Outs never really resonated beyond the Northwest. "Sleep" sure resonated with me, though: The reason I could sing along was because I'd actually recorded an acoustic interpretation (the band would probably say "abomination") of this very song many years ago. I'd even performed it at SXSW in 1995, during an afternoon show at Hole In The Wall that featured a bunch of Seattle bands. Heck, I can actually offer up the evidence -- though if either the Fall-Outs (or Barry Manilow) write in to object, I'll gladly remove it. Meanwhile, feel free to listen, but be warned...and then head over to eMusic and download the real, original Fall-Outs version....
http://www.myspace.com/wallynford
The Grand Finale: Longtime SXSW veterans who can somehow stick around through Sunday night learned many years ago that it's well worth the stayover to see Alejandro Escovedo's traditional unofficial closing-night gig at the Continental Club. While in some ways his 1990s Sunday shows at La Zona Rosa will never be surpassed -- those "Orchestra" gigs frequently featured more than a dozen band members, and the larger venue accommodated more than twice what can fit in the Continental, where many folks inevitably get stuck waiting in line outside -- it's equally true that the Continental is Alejandro's home turf; he plays there with a sense of comfort and confidence that cannot be captured anywhere else.
This year's gig was a semi-revelation, thanks to Chuck Prophet (remember him from the "Best Single Set" category back up-top?) sitting in on guitar. Freed from the need to fill in the six-string licks on the new material that he and Prophet wrote and recorded together for Escovedo's upcoming album Real Animal (due June 10 on Back Porch/EMI), Alejandro threw himself into his stage performance and vocal delivery with a passion and vigor unlike any other show I've ever seen him put on -- and keep in mind I've seen this guy play well over 100 times in the past 20-odd years. First and foremost, Alejandro has never really been a musician as much as he's a galvanizing bandleader and an emotional singer; both of those qualities were brought even further to the fore on this night, especially on the opening number, "Always A Friend", which may well be the best "single" Escovedo has ever recorded.
In a perfect world, Escovedo could perform like this every night, with Prophet and cellist Brian Standefer and violinist Susan Voelz fleshing out the sound while he sets the room afire as the frontman. In the real world, touring economics intervene. But for this one night, we didn't have to worry about that. Alejandro was as alive as he's ever been, and this little corner of the world was perfect, for a couple of hours.
adios,
peter
Posted by Peter at 8:20 PM | Permalink
March 14, 2008
* SXSW, so far....
Ideally I'd sit down and write a well-thought-out and fully coherent essay this morning, but, well, this is South By Southwest, and if you've ever been here, you'll know there's just too little time for that, when you're still right in the midst of running from one place to another all day and all of the night, hoping to squeeze maybe just a few precious hours of sleep in between.
So, alternatively, a few quick-hit highlights, before heading back out, and into the Friday fray:
* Michael Hall and Walter Salas-Humara's annual "Swollen Circus" unofficial welcome-party at Hole in the Wall on Tuesday night was about as memorable and moving as it has ever been -- due in no small part, certainly, to the looming presence of bassist Drew Glackin, who died in January and left a gaping hole in this year's SXSW which everyone did their best to fill (as Drew looked on from the other side of a chain-link fence, in a poster-sized photo that his friend Debbie Loos had hung behind the stage). The "surprise guest" turned to be the Minus 5 -- and it seemed about time, really, that Peter Buck had played the Hole in the Wall. (Scott McCaughey had played there before, in 1995 as part of a Seattle-at-SXSW day-party organized by...well, me.) Syd Straw charmed everyone just as she has for a couple of decades now; and the Silos closed the night with a beautiful tribute to their departed and beloved bassist.
* The ND showcase at Pangaea on Wednesday proved largely enjoyable, despite a few difficulties with the door staff (who weren't letting in folks with bags, despite the fact that SXSW gives every registrant a giant bag-o-swag at check-in, and then presumably wants them to go to the SXSW venues where...they're turned away for carrying bags? That would be a minor problem for the SXSW camp to address, it would seem).
Inside, the room was great -- rather comfortable and quite appealing -- though there was also one staff-related incident which everyone witnessed, because Daniel Lanois stopped mid-song to address it. Seems a stageside bouncer had let Ian McLagan go to the bar to get drinks for the folks he was sitting with, but then refused to let McLagan return to his seat with said drinks. Renowned bassist George Reiff (who'd played with Bruce Robison earlier) came to McLagan's defense; the ensuing argument eventually distracted Lanois, who valiantly came to Reiff's defense, asking the bouncer to quit hassling "one of the world's best bass players." I've seen Reiff play with many folks over the years and I'd be inclined to agree, but it sure was nice to hear that from an authority on the level of Lanois -- who subsequently proceeded to very professionally smooth things over with the staff as well. In addition to being one of the great musicians of our time, Lanois came across as a class act and a fine human being.
* R.E.M.'s taping Thursday afternoon of Austin City Limits (it'll air in mid-late May) was a personal landmark for me, having essentially been turned on to underground music by R.E.M. in the mid-'80s (like countless others of my generation) and also having attetnded many ACL tapings during my days living in Austin back then. At that time, R.E.M. and Austin City Limits existed apart from each other; they played to different crowds, served different audiences and purposes. For things to have shifted to a point where it was in fact possible for this show to happen 20 years later was quite gratifying to be able to experience.
OK, more later, off to dash out the door and into the wild blue yonder....
adios,
peter
Posted by Peter at 9:10 AM | Permalink
March 10, 2008
* ND #74 Revisited
A little strange, writing this bimonthly-habitual blog-entry, given what's on Page 2 of ND #74 (which, if you're reading this, you doubtless know all about by now). Not to pretend that the ball isn't dropping as we speak -- but it's also not good for the issue's contents to be overshadowed by the harsh news, so let's take a look through the pages....
* Andy Moore's live-review of a Poi Dog Pondering acoustic show in Madison, Wisconsin, brought back some fond memories. First few times I saw Poi Dog play, they were nothing BUT acoustic, in the most literal sense -- strumming their instruments and singing their hearts out sans amplification on the west mall of the University of Texas campus in the spring of 1987.
They'd left their hometown of Hawaii on a quest to busk across the mainland; Austin treated them so well that they kinda got stuck there, staying for around a month and then ultimately returning later in the year after their travels eventually wound down. They weren't your average busking combo, though; leader Frank Orrall was a prodigiously talented fellow whose enthusiasm rubbed off on everyone around him, and before long a mix of original Poi Dogs and Austin recruits had formed a formidable new ensemble that proceeded to rocket to the top of the local scene and nab a deal with Columbia.
Sometime in the early-mid '90s they uprooted and moved to Chicago, where they found an equally welcoming community and have more or less thrived ever since, even though the major-label tie was severed years ago. Trumpeter Dave Crawford, pictured on page 10, has also turned up in other conspicuous places, including onstage with Wilco during their recent five-night stand in Chicago. Violinist Susan Voelz has frequently toured with Alejandro Escovedo over the years, as a prime mover in his string-quartet and expanded-orchestra performances. And Frank, well, he just keeps plugging away; there's a new Poi Dog disc due out April 1, titled Seven.
* It was personally gratifying for me to see Mark Bryan's photo appear in the live-reviews section on page 17, accompanying Mike Farris at a show in South Carolina. Mark caught onto ND rather early, actually writing us a letter-to-the-editor that we published in ND #7. He's always seemed remarkably down-to-earth for a guy whose band has sold such huge numbers, and also continues to have his ear to the ground for stuff that's under-the-radar, frequently producing or playing with up-and-coming artists whose music moves him. He's also a way better golfer than me, but I won't hold that against him. (UPDATE: Apparently Mark also just released a new album today, titled End Of The Front. More info at his website, markbryanmusic.com)
* The headline for the Town & Country piece on Ivy Mairi (p. 26) was kind of a guess; given that Mairi is going to school in Montreal and thus temporary dislocated from her home on Ward's Island near Toronto, I suspect she's sometimes "missing the ferry" that would take her into the city, just as my wife and I miss the ferry that used to take us from Poulsbo to Seattle. Of course there's also some intended double-meaning there, as it was really a drag whenever we arrived to the terminal a little late and, well, missed the ferry. Overall, though, I'd highly recommend any lifestyle which involves regular travel across the water as opposed to down the interstate. And I'm willing to bet Ivy would agree.
* Kristin Andreassen wrote a few days ago to note that the photo of Uncle Earl on page 54 amid the cover story was in fact taken in 2005, rather than 2007 as we had it. The good thing was that Kristin said that was the only factual faux-pas she noticed, which came as largely a relief to me, given that there were so many details to get straight when dealing with a story encompassing around a dozen artists and involving about that many interviews (which my wife Lisa thankfully helped me to transcribe, otherwise I'd probably still be writing the darned thing). As much work as the piece was -- and if we'd had room, I probably could've gone at least another couple thousand words exploring other avenues and sidetracks -- it's been awhile since I've taken so much personal joy from writing an article. This string-band community is a special thing, I think, not unlike (in talent and spirit and camaraderie) the alt-country community from which this magazine sort of sprung in the mid-'90s. As such, it seems rather fitting that we were able to do this cover story in our closing days. My thanks to all the artists who talked at length with me in the process of putting it together.
adios,
peter
Posted by Peter at 5:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
March 7, 2008
* "leaves in a forest"
I'd like to begin today by quoting a couple of somewhat polarized excerpts from the comments-section of a post my co-editor recently made on his blog:
But if you're content sitting on your porch, shotgun in hand and yelling at the kids to get off the lawn, I'll leave you to it. (from someone named Donnie)
and:
Should I apologize for preferring the actual object to its electronic doppleganger? (from my co-editor, in partial response)
What follows is a manifesto of sorts that was received entirely apart from that exchange, but which speaks largely to the same root issues. It's from my longtime friend Kurt Heggland, who for many years in Durham, North Carolina, co-hosted (along with Steve Gardner) what was almost surely the best Americana-themed house-concert series in the country at a place he called Pine Hill Farm. (Among the artists who played there over the years were quite a few who have appeared on the cover of No Depression, including Alejandro Escovedo, the Drive-By Truckers, Robbie Fulks, and Blue Mountain -- playing unamplified in Kurt's living room to about 70 very fortunate paying customers.)
Kurt's hardly a technophobe; he works for Dell, previously worked for Sony Ericsson, and designs technological gadgets for a living. But he also knows good art, and understands the artistic experience. I think what he has written below is one of the finest expressions I've yet come across about the contemporary disconnect between technology and art -- and about what our overseas colleague Ed Ward has come to refer to as "neophilia" (for much more on that, read this: http://berlinbites.blogspot.com/2008/03/neophila-and-its-discontents.html).
So. Should you choose to view Kurt as another shotgun-toting porch-sitter howling at the kids, that's your prerogative, of course. And I'm not really suggesting you'd be wrong, or that Kurt is right. What I am saying is that it's very clear to me he's thought about this a lot. As has Ed Ward. And as have quite a few folks who, as a matter of fact, embrace technology to a pretty significant extent -- if that weren't the case, there's no way you'd be reading these words in this space right now -- but who also believe it's essential to think these things all the way through.
With that, I present to you the e-mail Kurt sent to me last night, after he heard about the imminent shuttering of the print edition of No Depression:
Not to sound like a luddite, but this news makes me think about why I hate the way the music industry is going.
Artists:
It used to be hard to break into the music business. Now it's still difficult, but you have even more crap obscuring your path so that it's probably a lot harder to get noticed. It's like bands used to be trees in a forest, now they're leaves in a forest, if that makes any sense. The path to get in line to get discovered is probably easier, but there's a corresponding increase in the difficulty for those trying to discern the true talent. I can't tell you how many times I've gone on iTunes myself to investigate some band that is all the rage, only to find they are just another insipid group of wanks who overestimated their talent but were somehow able to get their music past the sleeping sentries of the digital music biz. It's just as rare as it used to be for a band to have any real meaning, but now I have to wade through so much detritus that I don't get that excited about the search anymore.
The Experience:
I know the new music biz model is quite lucrative for many new-media companies and even for many bands, but it has taken away our artifacts, and that is the thing I most resent.
No one gets together and shares their 'records' anymore. Talking about the art on the cover or arguing what the best tracks/sides are used to be valid social interactions. People used to know the titles and order of the songs on their favorite records (some of us still do). We just download piecemeal snippets of agreeable audio, and often don't even know the name of the track or who the artist is. Many times even musically fervent friends of mine have not been able to name the artist for the track that is playing when I ask them, without consulting the LCD on the iPod or car stereo. They just downloaded something that was linked from a link that they found when they linked to an artist they actually could name.
The experience that sharing music gave us was half the thrill of the music itself (even listening to Journey from a boombox on the hood of a Monte Carlo sitting in a clearing in the woods around a bonfire had great meaning -- oops, a little too autobiographical). We developed relationships with artists through their records being played in their entirety...repeatedly. The 'shuffle' setting has certainly diluted this by eliminating continuity. Now everyone has white earbuds in their ears and couldn't share what they were listening to if they wanted to.
I'm perhaps being a bit over-dramatic and cynical here. I know people still share music, but now it has to be part of your personality to want to actively share. It's not a naturally occurring thing so much anymore in my opinion. It's in many ways harder to share, too, due to where the music resides (counterintuitive to the whole-collection-in-your-pocket, I know), and our mosquito-like attention spans. Like most adventures in the virtual world, finding music online is such a lonely activity that perhaps it's influencing the social aspect of our music. Why thumb through a friend's collection of CDs with a beer in my hand when I can scroll through millions of songs in the comforting glow of my own LCD at home?
The Future:
And on top of that, without the artifacts, where will our personal collections be in 15 or even 10 years? No one will be pawing through a St. Vinnie DePaul thrift store and find a sweet gem of an MP3 to be really excited about. It will just be gone into the ether more than likely. My digital collection will probably not even be accessible for my son to explore when he's in his teens. Assuming our current catalogs of music migrate to whatever the new technology/encoding arises, it may be easy for him to explore the genres/artists of the past, but I wonder if it will have as much meaning as the first-run Johnny Cash record that I got from my dad, or the untitled and impossible to find first Jayhawks record that my brother gave me. How can there be real gems anymore when a keystroke can multiply its existence by exponential numbers? I can download the same song that 500,000 other people download in 10 seconds from iTunes or Limewire -- where's the quest in that? I still buy everything on CD unless it's something that is only available digitally, which by the way doesn't necessarily make it special in the least.
ND is what Rolling Stone used to be, and Spin never was. Today's Rolling Stone is doing its part to reduce the already transitory attention spans of music fans. Steve Jobs just said recently "no one reads anymore". That's not true, they just can't read more than one paragraph at a time about any one subject. ND was dedicated to introducing people to artists, encouraging them to start a personal relationship with them, and maybe that's just not what the masses want anymore. They want: 1) to know who are they dating 2) do they have tattoos 3) how did rehab go and 4) boxers or briefs. That's not to say that there aren't important things being said in the digital media about music, but again -- leaves in a forest.
And even if I find something important, I don't get the artifact. I have most of the NDs that were published, and I'll be keeping them forever. Perhaps that's how my son will learn about awesome music from my era. (I plan to keep my CDs/vinyl too, so there's that.) When I get a new computer, all the links to cool things written about music on my computer will be probably be lost. And they will probably be taken down from the servers anyway to make room for more recent content even if I did somehow retain the link. Heck, I may lose my entire digital collection someday through a glitch or obsolescence or carelessness.
Maybe ND's future is more of a hybrid with a net-based core. Look at Pitchfork. They're going gangbusters. They sponsor a huge music fest every year now. They're starting a 'TV' station online soon. Clearly they're doing well. I don't see a counterpart to them in the roots/alt-whatever/Americana category, though they cover a small bit of it. Another blog I like, catbirdseat.org, has evolved from a blog to also encompass a record label. Maybe ND can be all these things. Heck, put out an annual digest of the best written work with a CD like Oxford American does. I'm sure you're exploring all the options and I'm sure ND will do great in it's next incarnation. I just regret not being able to have the artifact anymore.
-- Kurt Heggland
Posted by Peter at 8:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
March 3, 2008
* "left alone to hear the song...."
Raise your hand if you're familiar with the songs of Stan Rogers.
If your hand is up, there's probably about a 95% chance you're Canadian.
Either that, or Rogers was simply an artist whose name and work somehow managed to escape me all these years. But whatever the case, I got to know his music rather well this past weekend during a visit to Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Looking for some evening entertainment on our fourth/first anniversary (that's what happens when you get married on Leap Day), my wife and I stumbled upon Stan Rogers: A Matter Of Heart, a play currently being presented by Eastern Front Theatre at Alderney Landing in Dartmouth (across the bay by ferry from Halifax). A quick web-search indicated that Rogers, who died in an airplane fire on a runway in Cincinnati in 1983, was a man of significant respect and renown in his homeland; a recommendation from our longtime Canadian contributing editor Paul Cantin sealed our decision to attend the play.
Given the way Rogers died, it struck me as a bit eerie that his songs (as performed by singers Terry Hatty, Aaron Kyte, Julain Molnar and Cliff Le Jeune, with a three-piece backing band) almost posited him as a Canadian Jim Croce, in the way he deftly contrasts gritty character sketches against contemplative ballads. Croce's penchant for swaying from the likes of "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown" and "Rapid Roy (That Stock Car Boy)" into "Lover's Cross" and "New York's Not My Home" somewhat mirrored Rogers' ranging from "Night Guard" and "The Idiot" to "Forty-Five Years" and "Song Of The Candle".
Croce comparisons don't tell the whole story with Rogers, though; rather, it's just a starting-point to help convey his appeal, and to understand the high regard with which he's held in his home turf. Certainly he also brings to mind his countryman Gordon Lightfoot (and not just because both had signature songs about shipwrecks), but in the end Rogers stands distinct among Canadian songwriters, largely because of how deeply he drew upon the traditional aspects of daily living in the Great White North, especially along the eastern seaboard. From tales of maritime disasters to laments of fishing-trade changes to saluting the Northwest Passage to the obligatory hockey song, Rogers' oeuvre essentially serves as a classic blueprint for what might be termed "Canadiana."
And, as it turns out, there's a fairly direct connection between Rogers' legacy and the modern string-band scene that is the cover-subject of our March-April issue. Leonard Podolak, leader of Winnipeg band the Duhks, is the son of Mitch Podolak, founder of the long-running Winnipeg Folk Festival -- where, every year, the event is concluded with a rendition of Rogers' fictional anthem "The Mary Ellen Carter". Its uplifting chorus -- "Rise again, rise again" -- is adapted ingeniously as a thread running throughout A Matter Of Heart, a softly reassuring refrain revisited several times before the full song is belted out in a rousing finale.
You may well have to go to Canada to see it. And if you go -- while you're there, see what you can find out about Stompin' Tom Connors....
adios,
peter
Posted by Peter at 11:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)